Monday, December 19, 2011

In the last month or two on the ASMR Facebook group there’s been a discussion or two related to ASMR logos. We had one conversation talking about which existing ASMR logos people liked the most. We have the first circle that Jenn came up with, then the revised one that is most commonly used, and we have the UNF World design that I made, using a public domain image of the earth as a base.

I proposed that perhaps we should have a competition of sorts where people can submit their own logos that they’ve designed and we can choose the best looking ones to be exhibited on various network sites, such as this one.

The other conversation which was brought up talked about different products that we could have that sport an ASMR logo of sorts. So more and more logos started being submitted by two or three people in the group.

We had at least one member of the community who happens to be into graphic design, and volunteered to showcase some designs. As of right now I’ve seen some scribbles or doodles of these designs, which may or may not be improved upon and made in to professional looking logos. Another member has also contributed some great looking logos. If you’re a member of the group on Facebook you can view these in the pictures section. She’s also very nicely given me permission to show off the designs here on the blog too.

Click on the pictures for bigger versions

I don’t know how the community would react to having logos, or perhaps popular community phrases put on mugs, T-shirts and so on. I’d personally like the idea of having some business cards that have an ASMR logo on. There’s no doubt it would make for increased traffic and membership – which just keeps gaining and gaining as we speak. But I was promised I wouldn’t ever have to hand out flyers!

There’s one nice idea on the group related to T-shirts – having ASMR phrases in a sort of code that would be recognisable to other experiencers and those who are familiar with the design, but would be practically indecipherable to most other people.

For now the design, production and distribution of any ASMR products is merely just talk. If anyone out there wishes to go ahead and make some, then they can go ahead – we can’t really stop you. But I don’t think it’s really a priority for the research team as such, for the time being anyway. Be sure to post photos of any creations, though!

I tried to get in to the T-shirt designing business years ago when I was a teenager, but it didn’t ever really get anywhere, to be honest. I had a design, and looked in to the cost of buying T-shirts, printing or applying logos, and then having to sell them. But the idea just faded. Years later I found out from others’ experiences that it’s an extremely hard industry to break in to – fashion. But at least we all ready have the market, with over 2000 members on the Facebook group, and even other experiencers and non-experiencers that support us, who aren’t on Facebook.

Do you want to see, and would you like to own ASMR-branded products? Nothing is set in stone here, mind. We’re just discussing the subject for now. Chime in, in the comments below on this hugely interesting subject.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I’ve read some comments just recently from experiencers, who claim that giving ASMR to a loved one would be the ultimate Christmas gift. Well, that may be possible after all.

I was quite surprised to see on the ASMR Facebook Group’s wall that one of our community has apparently released her own Christmas album! She goes by the name of Hailey on her Facebook page, although her own personal Facebook account surname is different.

The album is called “Follow The Star”, and you can preview and perhaps purchase the album over at iTunes. The full album is $6.93, whereas individual songs are charged at $0.99 each. You can also pick up a physical copy of it (AKA a CD) by buying it at an online retailer such as Amazon. Hailey has confirmed that there was a change in one of the 7 tracks after it went on sale, so be sure you’re getting the latest version of it.

We’re used to seeing asmers create and upload their own sound or video clips online, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen a professionally, commercially released product by an experiencer. Hailey claims that she’s recorded and produced it all on her own, and to boot reports that her friends say some of the songs make them feel all nice and tingly.

There are many out there within the community on various network sites who claim that ASMR is different from what is known as frisson. But it is generally acknowledged that it may well be possible to have ASMR triggered by music.

So anyway, check it out and see if any of the tracks work for you. Perhaps leave a comment here on the blog or join the conversation over at her Facebook page or our Facebook Group (links above).

Hailey also has a YouTube channel called slowwhispers where she uploads her own trigger videos.

Monday, December 5, 2011

I’ve tweeted about the situation on Twitter – the other day, and about a month or so ago, too. I’ve decided to go more in depth here for those who follow the blog.

There’s a nasty YouTube bug, where videos in playlists disappear all of a sudden. A while back I lost 20-30 videos out of the recommended videos playlist. Just recently though I lost many more – about a third of the entire playlist if not more. I was doing routine cleaning up and moving of videos to other ASMR playlists. I clicked “save” and got an error message, reading: “Invalid request”. I clicked save again, and after the page loaded, I was stuck with less than 100 videos in the playlist, when I had over 150 just minutes earlier. I only moved less than 10 videos to other playlists.

This is the second time this has happened in the last month or two. I’ve reported this bug both times. It seems that others experience issues such as this, too. YouTube or Google needs to get this fixed ASAP. It’s most annoying. I was so bloody cross, especially the second time it occurred.

So all that work collecting recommended links and then adding them to playlists all went to waste.

But perhaps all is not lost. I have the history feature on YouTube which lets me see which videos I’ve seen lately. I’d have to go about visiting the links and adding them all over again. I also mentioned that I collect links to the YouTube trigger videos – I have a good habit of copying and pasting them in to a note-taking extension for my browser. So I can also do it that way – but it would be harder to see which video is which, I think.

For future use, to prevent this sort of thing having such a catastrophic effect on the channel, I’ve set up a backup playlist, which is unavailable for public viewing (private). So all trigger videos that I add to any playlist will also be added to this playlist in case the worst happens: I have another disappearing act on one of my playlists. I should have done this months ago. I meant to do it after the first time I came across this nasty bug.

That’s why it pays to have separate playlists and not just one big one. I learnt this the hard way. It just seems to happen with said playlist though, so I might have to start another big one and abandon this one. I’ll something out. I’ve actually added several new ASMR playlists based on theme just lately.

Sorry for the inconvenience it might have caused any of you. I’ll gradually try and re-add the videos that were lost.

Site Updates

These are just mini-updates that I was too lazy or busy to make a post for. They also list changes or additions that have been made to the blog, for interest's sake and to follow how the blog is developing.